Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.
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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Oscar Nominated Movies that should have Won
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Today's theme is by Birgit. I haven't watch a lot of the Best Picture nominated/winner movies, so it is kind of hard for me to say which should have won, so I'm sort of doing a reverse of it. I'm picking movies that I think should NOT have won because I have watched them and think surely the other nominees (some I have seen, others not) were better.
2010 Winner - The King's Speech (2010)
While The King's Speech was not at all bad, I do think some of the other nominees were better and more memorable. I prefer Black Swan, Toy Story 3 and The Social Network.
2010 Winner - The King's Speech (2010)
While The King's Speech was not at all bad, I do think some of the other nominees were better and more memorable. I prefer Black Swan, Toy Story 3 and The Social Network.
2005 Winner - Crash (2004)
I think everyone hates it right, so surely something else should have won. I can't remember much of Crash any more other than it was terribly heavy handed in its messaging. The only other nominated movie I saw was Good Night, and Good Luck and I think I had found it better than Crash.
2001 Winner - A Beautiful Mind (2001)
I found A Beautiful Mind boring. This is one of those years that I've seen all of the other nominated movies. Gosford Park, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Moulin Rouge! are my some of favourite movies so I prefer any one of them to have won.
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I loved Crash to be honest.
ReplyDeleteNice twist on the theme.
ReplyDeleteI liked The King's Speech and didn't mind its win though I wouldn't have squawked had Inception won...anything but The Social Network which I hated so very much!
I didn't hate Crash I just thought it terribly ordinary, certainly not worthy of a Best Picture Oscar. I thought Brokeback Mountain should have won but Good Luck and Good Night was a very fine film and had BM lost to it then it wouldn't have felt like such a cheat.
I thought Russell Crowe was sensational in A Beautiful Mind but much better than the picture. I would have much rather have seen the fabulous Gosford Park take the prize, it's head and tails better than the first.
Almost every year, there have been a few years where the Academy awarded the proper film, that a better film has been bypassed by a lesser one. It made it tough to say to three, I ended with four but could have had a dozen.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)-Just after the end of the First World War vet James Allen (Paul Muni) decides to ramble around the country working odd jobs before settling down. Striking up a casual acquaintance with another drifter he is implicated in a robbery and despite his innocence sentenced to several years on a Southern chain gang. Faced with intolerable conditions he manages to escape and over time build a new and successful life but fate intervenes. Powerful indictment of prison conditions and man’s inhumanity to man with brilliant work by Muni and a haunting ending. There is no way in hell this should have lost to the ponderous Cavalcade.
A Tale of Two Cities (1936)-Solid extremely well-acted version of the Dickens story of the French Revolution and some caught in its web. Handsomely mounted with Ronald Colman a strong Sydney Carton, Blanche Yurka a terrifyingly unhinged Madame De Farge and a lovely small performance by Isabel Jewell as a doomed seamstress. Again vastly superior to the corny and lumbering winner of its year-The Great Ziegfeld.
Grand Illusion (1938)-Eloquent treatise on the futility and senseless of war defies easy synopsis without sounding trite but the basic story is of two French fliers shot down during WWII and their relationship with their cultured German captor. Gripping and profound.
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)-Spirited, lively, colorful and flat out fun version of the legend pulsates with vivid colors and a sense of joy. Masterfully lead by director Michael Curtiz with performances full of joie de vivre from Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, the Warner’s stock company and Olivia de Havilland but driving the entire enterprise is the perfectly cast Errol Flynn who is obviously having a great time. You will too. Either this or Grand Illusion should have emerged triumphant over the ultimate winner, the scattered and foolish You Can’t Take It With You.
Double Indemnity (1944)-Rapacious Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) ensnares hapless insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) into killing her husband in such a way that they can collect the double indemnity policy on him. As Neff’s boss and mentor Barton Krebs (Edward G. Robinson) begins to suspect foul play things spin out of control and the depths of Phyllis’s maliciousness rise to the surface. Seminal noir that is expertly written and directed by Billy Wilder and memorably performed by Stanwyck and MacMurray in huge breaks from their established personas at the time. The winner this year was the genial but flyaway Going My Way, a pleasurable watch but nothing compared to this trendsetting masterwork.
I could not stand Inception...I sort of thought it was trying too hard to both brainy and a blockbuster...just not for me.
DeleteI love Gosford Park, it is so finely made.
All your choices are popular this week, and I'd swap them all out as well.
ReplyDeleteHaha...great minds...
DeleteThe King's Speech I like but man, I don't like the other 2 films.
ReplyDeleteI liked The King's Speech too but yeah, there were better contenders that year! I swapped Crash too, for Brokeback Mountain.
ReplyDeleteYep...I know a lot of people would have picked Brokeback Mountain too.
DeleteI’m actually glad the King’s Speech won but I know I am in the minority. I didn’t like Crash all that much and agree with you on that as well as LOTR should have won.
ReplyDeleteThe year Crash won...I don't think there were any LOTR movies, there were nominated previous years.
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